Treadwear on "wet drifting tires"

Thread in 'Technical Questions' started by Ramon, Jun 3, 2018.

  1. Ramon

    Ramon Member

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    Really the discussion should be what treadwear to use on a wet track. Hard or soft compound? Maybe a certain type of tread? I heard people reverse mounting some type of tires before...

    Anyway, I kinda wanna share a problem aswell :)

    After drifting a few laps on a WET track with pretty much fresh tires with about 80% tread left, my left rear tire started to look a little less fresh. Just took it for what it was and did like 10 - 15 laps.

    I stopped to change them out because I didn't want to ruin those any further because I had to do a 90 minute drive back home on them.

    Drove the rest of the day on a different set on the same conditions, same car, but hardly any wear.

    I really don't understand what caused this. Note that the right rear still looked pretty fresh apart from the normal drift wear. So only the left tire went bad. Did I get a bad tire mounted in the first place? Or could the rim be the problem? It may not be 100% straight and balanced, but good enough to comfortably drive highway speeds in a not so comfortable car :p

    I may have to add that before taking it to the track, I used these tires to drift a few roundabouts (only counter-clockwise) But before driving on the track they seemed to be in perfect condition.

    Anyway, the treadwear marked on the sidewall on these is 340. Is this too soft for the wet tracks? I'm kinda looking into getting a different much harder tire for the rear. Any suggestions on affordable tire types for wet drifting? I'm driving 185/60 R14 on an n/a na mx5 :p

    (The wear like this goes all around the outside of the left rear tire only)
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    J48p14d.
     
  2. Ramon

    Ramon Member

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    (See the last picture for an idea of the track surface) A little bit rough.. but the skid pad was all wet.

    (Tire pressure in the rear was about 50 psi or 3.5 bar)
     
  3. oscar

    oscar Member

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    Tyres need to go through a few heat cycles before they are used in anger, obviously not an issue when they are used on the road but when road tyres are used on a track they should go through the process. My guess would be that the tyre in question was quite fresh and had not gone through the natural heat cycling that normal road driving ensures.
     
  4. Ramon

    Ramon Member

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    I should have stated that they had been on the car for weeks driving it to work and all that. Also drove them to the track on these aswell.. which was 90 minutes highway driving. The first 20% was mostly normal driving wear.
     
  5. BenRice

    BenRice Well-Known Member

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    The surface would have been responsible for most of that. What treadwear were the other tyres?
     
  6. Ramon

    Ramon Member

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    I ran the rest of the day on these. No problems at all. I couldn't really tell what the treadwear was on those but even on touch it seemed quite stiff in the hot weather. My tires that got fucked felt like half soft to the touch.

    Dw8sioQ.
     

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